Sunni Arab Refugees from Iraq Not Returning;
$3-5 Bn. US Reconstruction Aid Wasted
Hamza Hendawi of AP says his interviews and on-the-ground researches in Baghdad support my contention that the Iraqi capital is now only 10 percent to 15 percent Sunni (in 2003 it was roughly 50/50 Sunni and Shiite):
' Among the statistics obtained by the AP:
— Only an estimated 50,000 of 300,000 displaced families — or 16 percent — have returned to their Baghdad homes, according to the U.S. military. Most are believed to be Sunnis.
— In Hurriyah, an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 families, most of them Sunnis, fled in 2006 and 2007. Of those, only 648 families — or 16 to 22 percent — have come back since September.
In addition, 350 to 400 of the displaced families have sold or rented their Hurriyah homes, suggesting they intend to stay away forever, said Maj. Hussein al-Qaissy, Hurriyah's Iraqi army commander.
Note that 300,000 displaced Iraqi families would likely be 1.5 million individuals.
I did research in August, 2008, in Jordan on Iraqi refugees, and it became very clear to me that they are not returning to Iraq. Many are traumatized, having seen horrific violence against neighbors, friends or family members. One fourth of the families applying for refugee aid reported having had a child kidnapped. Many have been personally threatened by militias who still control their old neighborhood. Sometimes the militias track them down in East Amman and threaten them again. Iraqi Sunnis do not feel safe returning to districts that are now largely Shiite. Mixed families feel that they no longer have a place to live safely. Most refugees have had their property confiscated. Many former Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad are now ghost towns.
Iraq says that security in its north has been enhanced by more vigilant Syrian border policing, a signal of better relations between Baghdad and Damascus. (My own guess is that the US commitment to a troop withdrawal timetable has made it less urgent for the Syrians to stir up trouble in the Iraqi north. They don't mind the Da'wa Party or the Islamic Mission Party coming to power in Iraq, though the Syrian government is secular. But they really minded a big US troop presence on their doorstep.
On the other border, Turkey is pledging to double the supply of water flowing into Iraq. One suspects that the quid pro quo is an Iraqi crackdown on the Kurdish Workers Party guerrillas who are hiding out in Iraqi mountains and who conduct cross-border raids on Turkish soldiers in eastern Anatolia.
As much as $5 billion in US reconstruction aid for Iraq was simply wasted, according to the GAO.
Iranian speaker of the House, Ali Larijani, while on a visit to Iraq reiterated the Iranian position that they want to see concrete policy changes from the US before they take President Barack Obama's overtures too seriously. The Iranians keep saying that the US put Saddam Hussein up to attacking Iran in September 1980. This was the last months of the Carter administration, and Gary Sick, who was then on the National Security Council, says that Iraq's invasion of Iran came as a shock to him and his colleagues. President Carter himself would do us all a favor by addressing this allegation, which has also been retailed by gadfly Christopher Hitchens. Also, the US archives for that period should be just about open, and the diplomatic record may also help dispel this myth. (It is true that from 1983 the Reagan administration sought an alliance with Iraq against Iran, but that is a different issue.)
France is selling 24 helicopter gunships to Iraq.
McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Wednesday.. Let's get this straight: bombings wounded several people in Mosul and Baghdad; Turkey bombarded the Qandil area and the Iranians shelled eastern Kurdistan villages-- both because they perceive Kurdish terrorist groups to have been given safe harbor in Iraqi Kurdistan. So this is what calm looks like?
' Nineveh
A roadside bomb targeted a U.S. military convoy near a girl's primary school in Rasheediyah neighbourhood, northern Mosul at 2.15 p.m. Wednesday killing three little girls, injuring seven others.
Iraqi Police found, Wednesday, the body of a man who had been kidnapped three days before from his jeweler's shop in the town of Bashiqa, 30 km to the east of Mosul. He had been shot many times in the head and chest.
Gunmen raided a house in Darkezliyah neighbourhood ,eastern Mosul late Tuesday and killed the woman who lived in it.
- Police found a dead body for a young man in Bashiqa (west of Mosul).
Diyala
A roadside bomb targeted the motorcade of civil society official, Azbar al Azawi as it left his home headed for work at 8.30 a.m. Wednesday. His brother was critically injured, and several others got away with superficial injuries.
Dohuk
Turkish bombardment was renewed Wednesday morning, hitting villages on the border strip near the city of Zakhu, northern Duhok without causing any human casualties, but eye witnesses said that the bombing caused great fear and panic among the villagers.
Sulaimaniyah
Iranian artillery bombarded the villages on Qindeel Mountain in northwest Sulaimaniyah province Wednesday morning without causing any human casualties.
Baghdad
- A roadside bomb targeted an American convoy near a clinic in Qahira neighborhood in northeast Baghdad around 7:30 p.m. Five Iraqi people were wounded with no casualties reported on the American side , police said.
- A roadside bomb targeted an American convoy in Adhamiyah neighborhood in northern Baghdad around 8:30 p.m. Four Iraqi people were wounded with a damage to an American vehicle with no casualties reported, Iraqi police said.'
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 3/26/2009 12:25:00 AM
|
Facebook
10 Comments:
Juan you said:
The Iranians keep saying that the US put Saddam Hussein up to attacking Iran in September 1980.
No one really knows who knew what and who encouraged Saddam. But one thing is for certain. After the Saddam's invasion of Iran, the US position, as in UN security council, was essentially calling for a ceasefire which legitimized the territorial gains that Saddam made at the beginning of the conflict. This was very different than US position with respect of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait.
I believe Hitchens's ultimate source is Dilip Hiro, _The Longest War_; and Hiro's source is Patrick Seale's _Asad: The Struggle for Power in the Middle East_. Seale's source is a 1987 personal interview with Muhammed Ali Hashemi. These are both good books, but on this point I'm afraid the evidence ultimately comes down to the guesses, hearsay and sour grapes of participants. Seale says "When the hostages were first seized two Iranian brothers, Cyrus and Muhammad 'Ali Hashemi, hammered out an arms-for-hostages deal with the State Department which Assistant Secretary Harold Saunders thought promising enough to recommend to Cyrus Vance. But Brzezinski kept raising so many fresh issues that when news broke of the rescue mission, the Hashemi brothers came to believe he had been playing for time. The same thing happened in the weeks before the outbreak of the Gulf War: Brzezinski appeared to lose interest in negotiations, leading the Hashemis to conclude that he had foreknowledge of the war and had placed his hopes in it." _Asad_, p. 363. AFAICT, that's all he's got.
Naturally, if Carter did encourage Saddam's attack on Iran, he would have made sure to leave a paper trail, replete with smoking guns. That sort of transparency has always been critical to cloak and dagger policy, of course. Just as W made sure to make a public confession about how he lied us into the Iraq invasion. The US government is always transparent like that.
There is no evidence that the U.S. encouraged Iraq to invade Iran.
However,
(1) As shown in a recent BBC documentary that interviews erstwhile US officials, the U.S. had reliable intelligence that Saddam had decided to invade Iran. It did nothing to stop or discourage the attack.
(2) At the beginning of the war, the US provided Saddam with intelligence on Iran's military, mainly on the state of Iran's military hardware.
(3) The US prevented Security Council condemnations of Saddam's aggression.
(4) Near the end of the war, a team of sixty Americans was providing support to the Iraqi military. (Reported by the New York Times.)
(5) The U.S. provided financial aid to Saddam.
(6) The U.S. provided intelligence to Saddam that was used for chemical attacks against Iran.
Behnam
"...Gary Sick, who was then on the National Security Council, says that Iraq's invasion of Iran came as a shock to him and his colleagues. "
It comes as a shock to me that a member of the National Security Council wasn't able to foresee a possible invasion. These things don't happen over night. There is a considerable amount of pre-invasion staging that goes on that should have been observable. Perhaps Mr. Sick didn't know. Perhaps none of his colleagues knew. But I would think/hope somebody knew.
ref : “the Iraqi capital is now only 10 percent to 15 percent Sunni (in 2003 it was roughly 50/50 Sunni and Shi'ite)”
So, in historical reality it was the Iranian / Shi'ite "surge strategy" that worked? Whereas the American "surge strategy" was in retrospect: a domestic political maneuver; an impotent military gesture by an already irrelevant occupying force? iow, The Coalition were (in military jargon) JAFO : Just Another F***ing Observer to the real WAR for IRAQ?
Tactically the Iran-Iraq war of Sept. 22 - 1979 was very Brzezinskiest, he loves strategic proxy wars to this he has admitted. It makes sense that United States was favorable to this invasion, indeed the Islamic revolution of Iran was a strategic imbalance for western as well as eastern blocks. Mr. Brzezinski has admitted that the Dec. 24 -1979 Soviets invasion of Afghanistan to prevent the spread of Islamic revolution eastward into Soviets Muslim central Asian Republics specially Tajikistan who borders with China has ultimately resulted in dawn fall of that regime , but for the western world the tactics used was different. They needed a proxy preventive war.
Like Iran, Iraq is a majority Shiite Muslim country and the only Arab Country with a land border with Iran, because of Geography Islamic revolution would have been more dangerous for Iraq then any other country in the region therefore it was only natural that Iraq had to be the gate keeper to prevent the spread of the Islamic Revolution westward into the Muslim Arab world that is why President Carter had to draw the line on the sand and make his famous declaration after the Iranian revaluation. So was there a good reason for Iraq to attack Iran? Of course there is, there is A River Runs through It. No wonder that geography is the first science that the mankind had to learn after all the history we know is the product of geography we have, and we all know what Truman said about the History.
I do not believe for many years to come any western government or Individual will admit compliance with Saddam on Iraq’s attack on Iran. But there is enough motif as well as after the fact evidence to conclude that the west as well as east was in favor of Saddam’s attack to contain the Iranian revolution within its borders, especially since the failed Nojeh coup of July 11 1979 could not reverse the revaluation. And indeed all the western countries as well as Arab countries and the Soviet Union helped Saddam to stop the revaluation. For eight years Iranians heroically stood up to this alliance.
For fact this is a big scar on the Iranians with regard to their relation with the west, most Iranians truly believe that Americans encouraged Saddam to attack Iran. This reminds me of when we were elementary school age, in family and friends gathering when the adults spoke of the CIA’s 1953 coup they knew in detail that was done by the Americans but outside of the home nobody could talk about the coup. In the
School history books we had to learn National Uprising against a dictator prime minster. It took almost 50 years when a US stateswomen in a
non transparent way admitted to the US involvement with coup against prime minster Mosadegh. Now days that Saddam is a criminal villain
in the west how could Mr. Carter or Mr. Sick admit to their involvement with Saddam’s war with Iran only an unfortunate philosopher like Mr. Donald Rumsfeld can be seen shaking his hand.
Vaslaam
According to Robert Parry: "The claim of Carter’s “green light” for the invasion was made by senior Arab leaders, including King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, to President Reagan’s first secretary of state, Alexander Haig, when Haig traveled to the Middle East in April 1981, according to “top secret” talking points that Haig prepared for a post-trip briefing of Reagan.
Haig wrote that he was impressed with “bits of useful intelligence” that he had learned. “Both [Egypt’s Anwar] Sadat and [Saudi then-Prince] Fahd [explained that] Iran is receiving military spares for U.S. equipment from Israel,” Haig noted. “It was also interesting to confirm that President Carter gave the Iraqis a green light to launch the war against Iran through Fahd.”
Haig’s “talking points” were first disclosed at Consortiumnews.com in 1995 after I discovered the document amid records from a congressional investigation into the early history of the Reagan administration’s contacts with Iran. At that time, Haig refused to answer questions about the “talking points” because they were still classified. Though not responding to direct questions about the “talking points,” Carter has pooh-poohed other claims that he gave Saddam encouragement for the invasion.
But before the U.S. heads to war in 2003, both Carter and Haig might be asked to explain what they know about any direct or indirect contacts that would explain the Saudi statements about the alleged “green light.” Saudi Arabia’s longtime ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar also might be asked to give a complete account of what the Saudi government knows and what its leaders told Saddam in 1980."
http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/022703.html
It is well documented that USA gave Saddam/Iraq intelligence of Iran troop positions, which USA knew from satellite photos. What could be more useful?
mauisurfer
.
Regarding the amount of fraud and waste in Iraqi reconstruction, please note that the estimate you published is only the fraud and waste of funds in that one particular fund, IRRF I. That doesn't count waste and fraud in the DFI fund, the IRRF II fund, Iraqi monies that were seized by the US and spent by the US, or several other funds. It does not count waste or fraud in appropriations to USAID, State or DoD.
For example, the $8 Billion in shrink-wrapped $100 Bills was not from the IRRF I fund.
Shouldn't we get an accounting of the entire amount of fraud and waste ?
Well, that is not going to happen with a Bush loyalist holding on to the position of Special IG for Iraqi Reconstruction. Stuart Bowen worked in the Office of White House Counsel immediately before being appointed to that IG job. While in the White House, his job was to conceal or defend the failures of the Bush Administration.
Do you really think that changed when he became IG ?
an avid student of the politics of graft
.
Post a Comment
<< Home